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SUGGESTIONS 



FREE SCHOOL POLICY 

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UNITED STATES LAND GRANTEES. 



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SUGGESTIONS FOR A FREE SCHOOL POLICY FOR 
U. S. LAND GRANTEES. 



l^EPARTMENT OF THE INTEIIIOR, 

Washington, January 27, 1872. 
Siu: I have the houor to ackuowledge the receii)t of your letter of the 
17th instaut, relative to the donation of lands and towu-lots by railroad 
companies out of their land subsidies for educational purposes, and in- 
closing a letter from Eev. George H. Atkinson, D.D., of Portland, Oregon, 
on the same subject. 

Such a project is one which cannot fail to commend itself to any one 
desirous of promoting the cause of education in the new States to be 
built up within the next quarter of a century upon our public domain, 
and receives my cordial approval. 

With the hope that the proposition may meet with the success its 
great importance merits, I remain, 
Very respectfully, 

C. DELANO, 
Secretary of the Interior. 
General John Eaton, 

Commissioner of Education, Washington, J). C. 



Department of the Interior, 

Bureau of Education, 

, Washington, January 17, 1872. 

Sir : I have the honor herewith to submit for your consideration the 
accipmpanying interesting statements and suggestions from Eev. George 
H. Atkinson, D. D., of Portland, Oregon. 

As a pioneer on the Pacific coast, he has had peculiar opportunities 
for knowing the importance of the points to which he here calls atten- 
tion. 

The setting apart of lots and lands for school purposes by many of the 
early eastern colonists is well known. The consequences of this provident 
care for general education are manifest in every desirable phase of so- 
ciety, as developed in that section of the country. The location and 
procuring of the site for the school-house is often a difficult problem for 
the early settlers to determine. Give them the site wherever they are 
invited to concentrate in towns, and the establishment of the school is 
likely to follow speedily. Add to this, if possible, the strong and em- 
phatic leadership in this direction of the proprietors, and the wise and 
successful introduction of the American graded school system of educa- 
tion in the English language may be considered as assured. 

If these settlers come from those older communities where public 
schools have prevailed, they may have the strength of conviction and 
the good judgment to undertake and successfully carry out such a pur- 
pose at any sacrifice on their j)art without aid, and even in spite of the 
indifference of the proprietors. If the settlers should not have had the 
antecedents which prompt them thus to go forward of themselves ; if 
they come from those countries where education has been neglected, or 



2 

wliero it has been controlled exelusively by a distant government with- 
out tlitir individual action, further than that of sending their children 
to school ; or if they speak a language other than the English, it is only 
natural that they should either neglect to take such action, or that they 
should, in any private ways that may suggest themselves, instruct their 
children in the language of their fathers, and thus, in a measure, con- 
tinue and perpetuate the diversities of their origin. In. what an embar- 
rassing position this would leave the youth of such a community, with 
reference to their entering upon the responsibilities of American citi- 
zens, it is easy to see. Mr. J. Frederick Meyers, a commissioner of emi- 
gration, sent abroad by the Secretary of the Treasury to make investi- 
gations on this subject in Germany, himself a German, in a late commu- 
nication to me, emphatically suggests that " for the next thirty years 
at least one hundred and fifty thousand Germans will immigrate to our 
shores annually, and finally share with us the governing power." * * 
" The law ought to provide," he thinks, " that all the children of these 
foreigners shall be instructed in the English language." He further 
observes that " there are thousands of German youth to-day compelled 
to fill subordinate and menial stations because their English education 
was neglected" in the common schools. It should be, i^erhaps, kept in 
mind that our immigration can be by no means limited in the future to 
populations speaking any one language, or even several, but must con- 
tinue to be of Yery diverse origin. The opportunities, therefore, which 
are to be afforded for assimilation to the language spoken, the ideas 
entertained, and the customs practiced in America, must be assured 
from other influences. No parties are more deeply interested than the 
owners of property where these settlers locate. However ignorant some 
of them may be when they come, others, and in many instances a large 
proportion, are well taught, and many have skill in special industries. 
These better informed classes seek for their children opportunities equal 
to or greater than those they themselves enjoyed. Large numbers come 
for the special object of enjoying opportunities for larger liberty and cul- 
ture, understood to be afforded in America. All that is needed is to put 
in the way of these immigrants a knowledge of what to do and how to do 
it, in order to lead to the establishment of the highest order of institu- 
tions thoroughly Americanized. Yet even these classes, neglected, may 
soon allow their children to grow up in that ignorance which is fatal to 
productive industry, and which becomes the cause of pauperism, vice, 
and crime, and those accumulations of evils which will turn away from 
their localities the tide of valuable immigration. But these same new- 
comers, slightly aided, would, on the other hand, preserve to the com- 
munities where they are located those features which would render them 
desirable for places of settlement to the best classes. Institutions would 
be established which would assure the opportunities for education to 
every child, and none of the demarkations of a diverse language would 
interrupt the flow of commerce and trade, or hamper individual effort 
with the disabilities of a foreign tonguco These communities, moreover, 
would not only be congenial to the best settlers from the most intelli- 
gent portions of our country, but they would become the center of a 
spontaneous growth in virtue and wealth. 

All property in their midst would be more secure, the sources of in- 
dustry multiplied, and their i)roductiveness advanced. 

The General Government, in its policy of granting the sixteenth section 
for common schools and the thirty-sixth for university purposes, gives its 
general influence in aid of universal education, and secures to the people 
a fund which operates as a valuable aid to the introduction of the best 



systems of culture. If the proiirietors of tlie great railroad grants could 
see the rightuess, as well as the pecuniary advantage to themselves, of 
adopting the suggestions made by Dr. Atkinson, and in connection with 
every town-site set apart blocks or lots especially for the occupation of 
school-houses for common schools ; and if they and their agents and the 
officers of their organizations could lead in the Avork of establishing the 
most approved sy .stems of free, common, graded schools, I am coutident 
there would follow results most favorable to their enterprises, as well as 
to the highest welfare of the communities to be connected with them, 
and to the civil organizations which they are to form. 

I therefore most respectfully and earnestly recommend to your in- 
dorsement the proposition made in the accompanying letter from Dr. 
Atkinson. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

JOHX EATOK^, JE., 

Commissio^ier. 
Hon. C. Delano, 

Secretary of the Interior. 



Washington, December 15, 1871. 

Dear Sir : As we are in the era of rapid settlement, town and city 
building, it is of prime importance to impress the American system of 
free schools upon these forming communities. 

Your office extends beyond local or State lines, and comprehends the 
entire territory of our nation. It gives you, as its head, the opportunity 
to suggest and to guide the proper action of the people, especially in 
their earlier educational movements. 

We have some exami)les of the wisdom of proprietors in laying out 
their towns ; especially those of Portland, Oregon, who twenty three years 
ago, set apart several blocks, very eligible sites, in different parts of 
the city, for schools, as well as half blocks for different churches. 

Prominent citizens moved early in the work of organizing the district, 
erecting the school-house, and establishing the free school. The result 
is a graded system of primary, grammar, and high schools, annu- 
ally extending and improving with the growth of our city. Our citi- 
zens of all classes — and we are natives of many States and countries — 
vote a tax every year to buy new blocks — we never buy less for a school- 
house and play-grounds — or to erect new buildings, or improve old 
ones, besides supporting the teachers. 

It is the judgment of our leading citizens that this expenditure for 
free graded schools is the best pecuniary investment which the city 
makes or has ever made ; while it is also the best possible agency to 
teach the English language correctly, antl to mould our multifarious 
population into one of homogeneous and truly American sentiment. 

San Francisco, on a much larger scale, is working out the same social 
problem. The early proprietors aud citizens took care to provide very 
liberally for free-school sites all over the city and in all the additions 
thereto, and to establish first-class graded schools, with primary, gram- 
mar, and higher departments. They havel^ursued this policy with such 
vigor and generous taxation that their schools rank with the best of 
Eastern cities. 

Their enterprise in this direction has drawn to them a permanent and 
most valuable population, whicjh is rapidly becoming sympnthetic aud 
homogeneous under the action of this quiet but powerful force excited 



in the scliool-room. This system is considerably extended in every one 
of the Pacific States with similar results, but the rapid changes in pro- 
cess there and across the continent, caused by the great railroad enter- 
prises, make it desirable and important that the national Commissioner 
of Education should help inaugurate the same system and i^olicy in all 
the new settlements and towns, and especially the railroad cities of the 
coast and the interior. It would have been well had Government 
land-grants for railroads provided blocks for school-sites in every 
town and city established, by such corporations, with the require- 
ment to incorporate the free graded school as a leading element of their 
policy. 

It can hardly be doubted that the intelligent gentlemen usually com- 
posing those corporations will readily adopt this policy if their atten- 
tion shall be called to it by yourself and by others connected with our 
National Government. As a large proportion of the new cities and set- 
tlements are their enterprises, established and stimulated by their plans 
for immigration, and for development of the new regions of the West, 
they can more promptly begin and efficiently carry out this American 
free-school sj^stem in such new regions than any other persons can do 
it. Besides, it Avill inure largely to their pecuniary interest, and to the 
intelligence, good character, and attractiveness of their several towns. 
The school-house, open to all, gives a large economic value to every other 
interest of a community. The same rule applies to existing cities and 
settlements that are in process of formation away from railroad centers, 
by the great rivers, bays, and sea-coast of the Pacific, and also in the 
farming and even mining towns among the mountains. Provision should 
be made in the beginning for the free education in English, the language 
of America, of every child, of every race and of every color, who is 
native, or who becomes an inhabitant, and who is to be a citizen of 
the American Eepublic, in fact or in form, by the claims or the operation 
of our laws. 

In no way can the public sentiment and habits of the people be so 
easily and surely unified. An early impress upon plastic materials will 
be found j)ermanent when those materials shall have become fixed and 
hardened. 

Ten or twenty years now, seals the character of future centuries. 

The American educational culture ought to lead and guide these form- 
ing communities. 

It is well to recall what vast regions of our national domain are to be 
impressed by the formative forces now so soon to be in o})eration, and 
what care is needed that right and good forces, not evil ones, be em- 
ployed. 

Taking Johnson's Atlas for authority, our domain east of the Missis- 
sippi, as ceded by England in 1783, was 815,615 square miles. Louisiana, 
as acquired from France in 1803, comprised 930,938 square miles, mostly 
between the Mississippi and the Eocky Mountains. Florida, acquired 
from Spain in 1821, has 54,208 square miles. Texas, admitted in 1845, 
contains 237,504 square miles. Oregon, as acquired by discovery in 
1772, and settled by treaty in 184G, added to the national domain 
280,425 square miles. California, as gained in 1848, increased our area 
649,702 square miles. Arizona, purchased of Mexico in 1854, extended 
our sway over 27,500 square miles more. 

The Alaska purchase magnified our country 577,390 square miles. 

Our whole area almost equals the continent of Europe, with all its 
northern islands. Great Britain, Iceland, and Nova Zembla. ' The sum 
of all Europe, with those extremely north, is 3,700,000 square miles. 



The sum of the United States of America, iucliuling- Alaska, is 3,573,402 
square miles, or 120,598 square miles less area. 

It will be seen that less than one-third of our national domain lies 
east of the Mississippi, viz : 

Sc^uarc luilcs. 

Original territ.orv of 1783 815, Glf) 

FloricLi, purchase of 1821 54, 268 

Total 869,883 



More than one-third lies between the Mississippi and the Eoclcy 
Mountains, viz : 

Square miles. 

The Louisiana purchase of 1803 930,938 

The Texas actiuisition of 1845 237,504 

Total 1,168,442 

The largest portion lies west of the Eocky Mountains, viz : 

Square miles. 

Oregon, as originally settled in 184G , 280, 425 

California, as originally settled in 1848 649, 762 

Arizona, as originally purchased in 1854 27, 500 

Alaska, as originally purchased in 1866 577, 390 

Total ., 1,535,077 



The Pacitic coast, west of the liocky Mountains, without Alaska, 
contains 957,087 square miles. 

It is to be noted that the extreme northern region of Alaska is inhab- 
ited, and that many productions conducive to life abound in that Terri- 
tory, making" it possibly a habitable abode for the white race. 

Moreover, the greater portion of our country is within the temperate 
zone, and within the thermal lines of abundant vegetable x>roduction 
and of various animal life. We therefore hold out invitations, and 
offer gTand inducements to the crowded x>opulations of other lands to 
seek for homes on our western prairies, mountains, and shores. They 
heed our call, and hasten hither in ranks of thousands and tens of thou- 
sands. Is it fancy to suppose that their children, mingling with ours, 
will in future centuries comprise more than half, perhaps two-thirds the 
population of the United States of America, and that west of the Mis- 
sissippi ? 

Only a little more than one-fourth of our area lies east of that ri^er, 
or, excluding Alaska, less than one-third of it. Is it improbable that 
one-half or even two-thirds of the population will live west of that 
river, or fully one-third of the whole on the Pacific slope? Estimate 
that population in the year 1900 at 100,000,000, and in 1950 at 150,000,000 
thus located, and you must be impressed with the imperative duty 
to guide their sentiments and form their habits upon the best models of 
American mental and moral culture. 

The history of the world has never presented an opportunity so grand 
or an exigency so commanding — unless it was that of saving our Union 
on the field of battle — as now occurs to save our Eepublic, in all its 
parts, with more than its present prestige, and power, and glory, by the 
impress of its ideas upon the rising generations. 

Immigrant populations are plastic. Children are plastic also. Soon 
both classes become settled, rigid, and immovable. Two-thirds of our 



6 

great coimtry calls for true educators with au earnestness and a rapidity 
which it wilf be difficult even for the combined power of the State and 
Cleneral Government to meet and supply. 

But the occasion and the opportunity are upon us to do to our utmost 
what the voice of patriotism and the voice of Providence clearly indi- 
cate. 

With much respect and esteem, I subscribe myself your friend in the 
work of popular education, 

G. H. ATKINSOK 

General John Eaton, 

United States Commissioner of Education. 



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